Monster Mash

Book excerpt: Like so many millions of other misguided people, I am a conditioned result of a celebrity-worshipping culture, systematically taught that fame and fortune are admirable goals and that celebrities are somehow superior beings, like gods, if you will. It has taken many years to expunge oneself from this false frivolity. Although many Halloweens have come and gone, I am finally cured of what today is labeled Celebrity Worship Syndrome. I believe that I'm not alone and I feel better. The following is not just another Hollywood Who's Who or Kiss and Tell book (with a couple of exceptions.) It is, however, peppered in part with an ample supply of sometimes meaningless and petty gossip; Now, my grandchildren and I can commiserate over whom Hillary Duff and Lindsay Lohan are dating. As is the propensity for certain current and former star-struck fools, like myself, to spew forth tales of meetings with famous people, just so, I have chosen to believe that these writings simply screamed out for ubiquitously shameless namedropping, thus, I giggled and gave in, while fully realizing than no one under forty will recognize half of the names mentioned (other than the two aforementioned). Anyway, Viva Hollywood! This memoir might be viewed as a personal record of one man's almost (in the Buddhist sense of not fully awakened) human encounter with the banal and the divine.